when we reflect, that out of these hideous misconceptions of the principle of evil arose the belief in witchcraft – that this was no dead faith, but one operating on the whole being of society, urging on the wisest and the mildest to deeds of murder, or cruelties scarcely less than murder – that the learned and the beautiful, young and old, male and female, were devoted by its influence to the stake and the scaffold – every feeling disappears, except that of astonishment that such things could be, and humiliation at the thought that the delusion was as lasting as it was universal.
